STIs IS NOT A GENDER SENSITIVE DISEASE

For the fifth time in my marital life I am infected with STIs how careless am I. I could barely sleep after I came back from the hospital that day. How was I to tell my husband who never believes such an infection concerns him? We have had many fights on this issue and his stance remains that whatever infection I have is my business and he doesn’t see why I keep talking to him about that.

This time around I was not just angry because I have got the infections again or will still buy the drugs all by myself but I was angry at myself for letting him infect me over and over. I needed someone to talk to because my head was almost exploding. I went to a close friend that morning to unburden my heart because it was truly heavy.

Women can carry pain in their hearts and still give the world peace and smiles. After I finished narrating my ordeal to this friend of mine she looked at me and said “it is well sis”. She told me in that area of marriage married women are very vulnerable but societal norms won’t let them speak up. She recounted her own story which left me speechless. She said she got married as a virgin and has known no other man but her husband. Five years ago she was diagnosed HIV positive which greatly alarmed her. Her husband’s response to the situation was very wicked and inhumane. He blamed and scandalized her for infecting him since she is a prostitute. Ironically when their health situation got really bad she discovered that her husband had been diagnosed positive two years before her but he refused to take the antiretroviral.

I left my friend’s house confused than I went there. Why should women pay the price I kept asking myself. My mother was right there in the living room when I came back but I was so carried by my thoughts that I didn’t notice her. She said “Mamon can you share with me what is bothering you this much?” “Are you through narrating?” was what she asked after I had finished. I nodded and she laughed while she went straight into the kitchen to get me food. I felt insulted and became angry immediately.

I judged her wrongly I realized when she shared her own experience with me. She said the situation was horrible in a polygamous marriage like the one she was in. in that set up a spouse is never free from STIs since it is a chain. She told me the reason why family members usually came to our compound and held meetings with her and my father was because she had refused having sex with him. Explaining herself to me she justified her action with the fact that my father was never ready to go to the hospital for check up or even acknowledge that STIs in his family concerned him. My daughter I asked myself what use it is to be having intercourse with a man and spending huge amounts of money later for treatment. She made me understand that was the situation many women during her time faced since promiscuity was a normal thing.

Beside the fact that the story made me angry what has been giving me sleepless nights are her last words “so you people of this time where there is knowledge, freedom and many health facilities still suffer like we did in the past?” “that means I tried since I succeeded to refuse your father sexual intercourse and never suffered from STIs from thence”. These remarks of her have made me wonder where this oppression on women’s health rights is taking the community to? Many women have died after their husbands because they had no right to express their view about having sexual intercourse with their husbands whom they suspected of being infected.

Will it be an abomination to fight for women’s rights to making decisions concerning their health? Is it fair for men who are famous in promiscuity to be left in this manner to continue to spread STIs of all sort? Can the use of condoms not only be limited to government campaigns on HIV prevention? I feel we should change this discourse.

I envision a society where every woman freely take charge of their sexual life without fear of intimidation or being judged. It is for this reason that as a follow up on my commercial bus sensitization we are visiting women groups to give education on these issues. STIs which affect both men and women can be prevented as well as treated like any other disease so let communities not make it a gender sensitive disease.